Millipedes Have Been Living a Lie

Greek mythology tells us that not long after a young and incautious Persephone was first taken into the underworld by Hades, she made a gaffe of epic proportions by sampling the cuisine. Down in the dirt, she munched on a pomegranate, binding herself eternally to a subterranean life.

In this way, Persephone is basically a millipede. Bear with me. Millipedes’ primary goal in life (other than reproduction) is to crawl through soil and scrounge for food. “They just do one thing, which is tunnel around and eat things,” Gwen Pearson, an entomologist at Purdue University and the keeper of the school’s “bug zoo,” told me. “Millipedes are the. Some species even —just as Persephone emerges from Hades to herald the spring and returns for a winter in the underworld.